Literature tips

Daniel
Blatman gives the first-ever comprehensive account of the final chapter of Nazi
annihilation policy. Unlike what had gone on previously, events were no longer
played out in remote Eastern Europe but on German streets and fields. And the
murderers were no longer from the ranks of the SS, the police units, or the
army. Brutalized by the war and Nazi propaganda, civilians now took part in the
massacres and the ruthless hounding of fleeing “enemies of the people”. This
standard work is thus also a horrifying portrait of German society at the end
of the Second World War.

The editors Ilse Macek and Horst Schmidt have compiled for the first
time a selection of speeches and writings by and on Max Mannheimer as a way of
honoring and portraying this fascinating man. Friends and companions like
Charlotte Knobloch, Hans-Jochen Vogel, and Christian Ude as well as family members
contribute and give a very personal view of Max Mannheimer.

The industrial mass murder in Auschwitz would not have been possible
without the cremation ovens and the ventilation technology used in the gas
chamber constructed by the Erfurt
firm of Topf & Söhne. Annegret Schüle reconstructs the history of this firm
and shows how the owners, engineers, and assemblers not only knew for what
purpose the facility was to be used, but also became accomplices. Topf &
Söhne is an example for the key role played by private businesses in Nazi mass
exterminations. The book is an important contribution to this aspect of the history
of 20th-century industry.

Between
1941 and 1945 the Nazi regime deported around 52,000 prisoners from across
Europe to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace. They were to perform forced labor
there and in the affiliated subcamps on both sides of the Rhine. Over the
course of its existence Struthof was turned from a labor into a death camp.
Almost 22,000 prisoners died of hunger, exhaustion, illness – or were directly
murdered. Those who survived were ruthlessly exploited by German companies, in
particular in Baden-Württemberg and Alsace. In years of research Robert
Steegmann has succeeded in meticulously reconstructing the history of the
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and the fates of those degraded en masse
to slaves.